Now in its fourth year, the Hoover Institution Library & Archives’ Workshop on Political Economy brings together scholars from across the globe to study the history of economic thought using the archives of such notable thinkers as Karl Popper, Milton Friedman, and F.A. Hayek. This year the workshop welcomed Leah Wright Rigueur, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power (2015), who presented a keynote address on June 28th.

Since independence in 1960, the Nigerian government is estimated to have lost over 400 billion dollars to corruption, and has consistently ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. This begs the question: what is so distinctive about Nigeria’s corruption?

Hungarian ambassador to the United States György Szapáry, along with Eva Voisin, the honorary consul general of Hungary in San Francisco, and Gabor Kaleta from the consulate in Los Angeles, met with Richard Sousa, the director of the library and archives at the Hoover Institution on April 26, 2011. After the meeting, Maciej Siekierski, curator of Hoover’s East European Collection, gave the ambassador a tour of the Hoover Archives, focusing on the Hungarian collections, including publications from the time of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

The Hoover Institution hosted its Board of Overseer’s winter meeting in Washington, DC, from February 26, 2012, to February 28, 2012. The event began on Sunday evening with six presenters. Fouad Ajami, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the cochair of the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order, and Charles Hill, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, gave a talk titled “A Year of Living Dangerously: The Arab Awakening, the American Retreat, and the Dangers for World Order Beyond.”

As part of the inaugural Hoover Institution Library and Archives’ Workshop on Political Economy, Professor Angus Burgin of Johns Hopkins University gave the keynote lecture titled "Hayek, Friedman, and the Return of Laissez-Faire."

When Hoover historian Jennifer Burns approached the challenge of organizing a new workshop several years ago, the thinking was big picture and collaborative: embrace scholarly interest on the wide-ranging subject of political economy.

From June 20 through June 24, 2016, the Hoover Institution Library & Archives brought together scholars from across the globe for its third annual Workshop on Political Economy. Organized by Stanford history professor Jennifer Burns, the workshop invites researchers from diverse fields to study the history of economic thought using the archives of such notable thinkers as Karl Popper, Milton Friedman, and F.A. Hayek. Participants spent the week pursuing individual research projects in the Hoover reading room and participating in daily roundtables and discussions dedicated to expanding interdisciplinary conversations surrounding economics, political theory, and history.

On October 15, the second episode of Hoover’s chartcast series The Numbers Game was released. Hoover fellows John Taylor and Russell Roberts discuss possible explanations for the sluggish recovery from the current recession, which began in 2007. By historical standards, the current recovery has been disappointing. Is it the ongoing slump in construction employment, the effect of housing prices on saving and spending decisions by households, or the aftereffects of the financial crisis? Taylor rejects this reasoning and argues instead that the sluggish recovery can be explained by poor economic policy decisions made by the Bush and the Obama administrations.

The current release builds on the first episode, which also addresses the recalcitrant economic recovery. Taylor explains that GDP has not returned to trend, that the percent of the population that is working is flat rather than rising, and that growth rates are below their usual levels after such a deep slump.

From June 22 through June 26, 2015, the Hoover Institution Library & Archives brought together scholars from across the globe for its second annual Workshop on Political Economy. Organized by Stanford history professor Jennifer Burns, the workshop invites researchers from diverse fields to study the history of economic thought using the archives of such notable thinkers as Karl Popper, Milton Friedman, and F.A. Hayek. Participants spent the week pursuing individual research projects in the Hoover reading room and participating in daily roundtables and discussions dedicated to expanding interdisciplinary conversations surrounding economics, political theory, and history.

The year 2017 has seen amazing growth in the Library & Archives’ efforts to acquire, preserve, and make available the world’s most important materials on war, revolution, and peace across the globe. Digitization initiatives, exhibitions, events, workshops, scholarship, and educational programs continue to make our collections available to scholars, students, policy-makers, and a broad public interested in the meaning and role of history.

The year 2015 brought global attention to the richness of the holdings at Hoover. The books and documents at Hoover Library & Archives served as the foundations for blockbuster films, renowned scholarship, well-attended exhibitions, and dramatic findings related to current events.

Moises Velasquez-Manoff, author of An Epidemic of Absence, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book--a discussion of why allergies and autoimmune diseases have been on the rise in the developed world for the last half-century. Velasquez-Manoff explores...

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